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Chief’s player shoots girlfriend then self

The sports world was stunned to wake up to news of a sad and bizarre story out of Kansas this morning:

USA — Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher fatally shot his girlfriend and then committed suicide at the team’s practice facility Saturday morning, a person familiar with the details of the shooting told USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity because police have not yet made Belcher’s identity public.

Police spokesman Darin Snapp told USA TODAY that a Chiefs player killed his girlfriend earlier in the morning and then drove to Arrowhead Stadium where he shot himself in front of Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli and coach Romeo Crennel.

Blecher was only 25 years-old, his victim was only 22. If that isn’t sad enough, the couple is survived by their three month old daughter.

As to roid rage, I had heard that the concept was facing a great deal of criticism/skepticism. I saw a documentary (Bigger, Stronger, Faster) that raised a lot of doubts, but it wasn’t pretending not to be biased either. No matter what the cause, it’s an awful thing.

It’s interesting (read: depressing) that the first reaction of so many people web-wide is to speculate on what “made” him do this, as if women being killed by boyfriends/husbands is so rare and unheard of.

This woman’s death isn’t some sort of shocking aberration; violence against women, including domestic violence, is happening in epidemic proportions, and women are dying every single day as a result. Most of them aren’t involved with NFL players, however, so their murders rarely make the news.

More than 90 women were murdered every week in 1991 – 9 out of 10 were murdered by men. (Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p. 2) Of the 5,745 women murdered in 1991, 6 out of 10 were killed by someone they knew. Half were murdered by a spouse or someone with whom they had been intimate. (“When Violence Hits Home,” Time, July 4, 1994)

In what world is this story, “bizarre”. This is routine. This is death in the US.

1) It’s ironic that a weapon is complaining about violence involving another weapon.

B) I’m not a gun nut, but linking this to gun control doesn’t connect. The gun was simply the instrument. For people that want to commit this kind of violence, they would use a knife, or a bat, or a sledgehammer, or something else.

Greg, you’re right in saying that people can find ways to kill without a gun – the events in Casper being an example, bu I think that it’s also clear that these kinds of situations are far more likely to end in death when guns are involved

On the subject of ‘roid rage; as I understand it it is an increased level of aggression caused by the increased levels of testosterone supplied by the steroids. Thsi could understandably lead to spur-of-the-moment crimes of aggression, but this doesn’t sound particularly spur-of-the-moment… unless he just happened to have a gun on him when they started arguing.